Media "Cocoon" Obtuseness

Carol Platt Liebau

11/13/2012 7:42:44 AM - Carol Platt Liebau

In the wake of the GOP defeat last week, Politico's Jonathan Martin has emerged to lecture Republicans on the danger of living in a "media cocoon" of right-leaning news outlets.

The piece is a case study in liberal obtuseness. Does Martin not understand that the very existence of talk radio and Fox News opinion programs (their news is more balanced than anyone's) is a stunning rebuke to the media establishment he represents? If the MSM were truly "fair and balanced" -- if it were truly "inclusive" of a "diversity of voices" (to employ hot liberal buzzwords) -- then the "conservative media" he decries wouldn't even exist.

Instead, the elite MSM is made up of people who are themselves wrapped in an ideological cocoon -- where government spending of other people's money is "compassion," abortion-on-demand-for-any-reason is a sacrament, and where it is an article of faith that America is a racist country with sins for which it can never fully atone.

It is dangerous to the health of any representative democracy when there is no universally trusted, authoritative source for straight reporting. But thanks to the increasingly obvious leftward tilt of the MSM -- whether it's Dan Rather in '04, George Stephanopoulos and other former Dem staffers masquerading as impartial journalists or 1,001 other offenses to the idea of impartiality and transparent, straight reporting -- it's happened.

If Martin really cares about the problem, he should be advocating for more inclusion -- and more respectful treatment! -- of a diversity of viewpoints in newsrooms like his own, rather than blaming conservatives for the entirely rational and understandable decision to go where their voices are heard, and their values and opinions treated with at least a modicum of respect.